Tag: Bouquets

On occasion, I do have the wonderful opportunity to create floral designs, both fresh and artificial for weddings. On this occasion, the bride had a very specific request for royal blue flowers and she wanted a fancy ribbon wrap, which can be difficult to achieve with silks because of their very thin stems.

Luckily, I found a solution! (There are “pre-made” holders you can purchase. I, however, found this to be a prettier solution.)

For this bouquet you will need the following:

~ Wire cutters
~ Floral Tape
~ Hot Glue Gun and hot glue sticks
~ Scissors
~ 2 paper towel tubes
~ Tissue paper or newspaper wrap
~ 1 roll of medium width decorative satin ribbon – the smaller the width, the more you will need and the wider widths are awkward to work with.
~ 2 bunches of silk flowers, any color – bloomed roses are the best if you want to do a rounded bouquet as shown here.

~optional – decorative feathers and rhinestones for the bouquet base and additional rhinestones to decorate the rose centers.

*This tutorial requires an intermediate to advanced knowledge of floral design since I will not be showing you how to create the bouquet from the beginning.

To begin, remove all the stems from the plastic bases. Remove excess leaves from the stems. Then wrap each rose with floral tape. I also suggest carefully gluing the flowers/roses to their stems, since they tend to pop off.

Once wrapped, arrange the flowers in desired bouquet shape. I chose a rounded bouquet shape. Trim the bottoms of the stems so they are even and short enough to hold comfortably. Using floral tape, tape the stems together and set aside.

Next, take one of your paper towel tubes and measure the length you want your bouquet to be and add one inch. (Don’t make it too short or you won’t be able to see your design – too long and it will look and feel awkward). Once you have your desired length, cut straight across taking care not to flatten the tube. Now on one end cut four slits into the tube. Fold the slits over each other as shown in the picture below. Glue in place.

Cut a two-inch piece of ribbon and fold it over the bottom of the folded tube, as shown. Glue down the ends. Now wrap the remainder of the tube with ribbon, starting from the bottom.

Flatten the second tube and then fold in half, cut slightly shorter than the length of the bouquet stems. Wrap the flattened tube around the stems of the bouquet, hold firmly in place. Wrap paper around the flattened tube – this acts as a filler. (Trust me, you’ll want the folded tube since it will expand once inside the first tube and make the fit even tighter.)

Place the bouquet with the paper wrap all the way into the first tube. The tube should reach all the way to the top, if not cut the stems on the bouquet shorter. The decorative ribbon should be just under the base of the flowers.

Once it fits correctly, place hot glue inside the tube to keep the bouquet in place. If you’d prefer, you can carefully remove the bouquet and cover the paper with glue. Just be careful not to burn yourself or get glue on your pretty ribbon.

Now that it’s firmly in place you add your decorations to the “front” of your holder. I used a combination of feather and rhinestone decorations.

Finally, check one last time that the bouquet is firmly in place by carefully holding it upside down. If it’s not, glue it some more. Finally, accent your bouquet with rhinestones. I just added one to the center of each rose.

As an added bonus for the bride, I took some extra flowers and made a mini toss bouquet. I just wrapped the stems with the left over ribbon.

We hope you liked this tutorial. If you have any questions or have something you’d like to add – just leave us a comment below. Also, let us know what other kinds of tutorials you’d like to see!